New stove owner/user

[okiesmoker]

So, we just built a new house and put in a free standing wood stove. My wife and I both grew up with wood stoves as the main source of heat in our parents' houses. We live in OK and our temps can be somewhat cold and a little colder than what we grew up with. Most of the native wood around here is various types of oak and pecan. We have gotten some other woods like bradford pear and elm searching around for people offering wood to be cut and hauled off from storm damage, etc. Our house is about 2600 sq ft and here is the floor plan/layout.



The stove is in the living room, closest to the hallways going to the back bedroom and front of the house. We got a US Stove 2500 stove and it seems to do well. So far, I think we're getting the hang of burning and trying to learn the nuances of getting a good fire going and keeping the secondary burn feature working well. We've gone through about a rick of wood already using the stove as our primary heat source. We've been having typical winter temps for here through most of mid November to early December, which is usually 50's during the day and 30's at night. We've had a few spells of lower temps and also some strong cold spells like this weekend with lows in the single digits and highs in the 20's to 30's. We can keep the core area of the house at 70-74 on those cold days and have no trouble doing the same on the warmer days.

It seems a little like we've burned a fair amount of wood already and wondering if we're burning too much too fast or if we're about right. We're burning wood we cut and split about 14-16 months ago and have more wood cut from a year ago and split a few months ago.

So, a few questions...

1. Does it seem like the wood consumption is about right?
2. Do I always need to strive for seeing the good flame crawl secondary burn on top of the stove for maximum heat?
3. Is wood cut for a year and split for about 4-5 months going to be decent to burn at the end of our season?
4. I want to watch creosote build up...if I take the chimney cap off and look in the pipe to inspect in another month or so, what exactly am I looking for?
5. I've got the blower kit on the unit...what has been your experience with blowers...are they good to run all the time?

 

[brad wilton]

24/7 burning uses alot of wood i know from my own burning so don't worry about that,you don't want to use blower consantly beacause it cools down stove.i have thermodisc that turns on when stove reachs 500degrees you want stove to heat up before blower is on, to long on just blowing cool air,do you have thermometer on stove helps keep track of how ot stove is.split wood dries alot quicker then logs so split them as soon as possible oak usually takes 2yrs to dry properly new stoves need dry wood to work at peak ghost flames im not going to comment on because i find i get better heat opening up a bit and having some slow orange flame ,boy i taik alot lol

 

[okiesmoker]

24/7 burning uses alot of wood i know from my own burning so don't worry about that,you don't want to use blower consantly beacause it cools down stove.i have thermodisc that turns on when stove reachs 500degrees you want stove to heat up before blower is on, to long on just blowing cool air,do you have thermometer on stove helps keep track of how ot stove is.split wood dries alot quicker then logs so split them as soon as possible oak usually takes 2yrs to dry properly new stoves need dry wood to work at peak ghost flames im not going to comment on because i find i get better heat opening up a bit and having some slow orange flame ,boy i taik alot lol

We do have a thermometer and only run the fan when it is pretty hot...at least 350, all the way to 600ish. I'll work on getting the rest of my logs split and drying.